


Mythos

by NerdsNeedLoveToo



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Love of a lifetime, M/M, Malec, Romance, shadowhunter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 19:01:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13887159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerdsNeedLoveToo/pseuds/NerdsNeedLoveToo
Summary: There is a legend buried deep in myth, which has long been forgotten and hidden in the earth. It’s the legend of an immortal heart.





	Mythos

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first doc I’ve written and posted on AO3, and the first for this fandom. I adore constructive criticism.

The wind whispered through rustling leaves and bending grass. Rivers picked up the secret and carried it down stream, roaring it across waterfalls until it flowed down deep to sodden soil and rock. But it was the Earth that held the knowledge longest. It kept close what life had forgotten. Only once in a hundred thousand years did it remind all the creatures of Gods and men that once upon a time, legend became myth, and myth became forgotten.  
\--------------------------------------------

  
Waking slowly, Magnus smiled with his eyes still shut. The soreness he felt all over reminded him of previous night’s endeavors, and he hummed contentedly.

  
“I hear you purring,” Alec thickly commented, his own eyes still shut against the rays of sifted sun that droned through the thin curtains. The young Shadowhunter hummed himself before nearly giggling in an un-manly fashion that made Magnus smile wider.

  
“Of course I am,” Magnus replied with a smirk and hint of flirt to his voice. Rolling onto his side, and slinging his leg across Alec’s he burrowed in and wished the morning could go on and on. He knew it couldn’t, of course. As the most powerful warlock in New York, he knew he’d have duties to attend. And being lover and life partner to the leader of the Shadowhunter Institute, he knew Alec would soon grow restless as duty outweighed personal pleasure. It was something the exotic warlock admired about his brave, soldier lover. Even if it did get in the way of their personal time.

  
But for now, Magnus intended to relish the feel of the archer’s fingertips running slowly up and down his back. Rarely did they get to just lay together in post-dawn hours. In the five years they’d been together, they’d learned to cherish these times.

  
It was a pleasant surprise when Alec lifted Magnus’s chin, kissed him gently, and rolled them over to continue the previous nights loving. They’d be late, and take a great deal of ribbing from Alec’s brothers Jace and Max, not to mention his sister Isabelle.

  
Worth it, he thought as he gasped at the feel of the other man’s skin on his, sending sparks of pleasure coursing through him.

  
Later when they arched against one another and collapsed, replete, they professed their love, and slowly began their day.  
\------------------------------------------

  
For their tenth anniversary, Alec stood nervously on the balcony. Ten years. That’s how long ago he’d walked away from Lydia at the altar, and instead marched down the aisle to claim Magnus in a kiss. When he’d turned away from his bride-to-be, he’d had no idea what he’d been doing. He’d just known that Magnus had captured him completely.

What started off as mild flirtation had grown, making the inexperienced young Shadowhunter fumble along the way. But the Indonesian warlock, with his exotic looks and hundreds of years of experience, had been just as smitten.

Together, they’d fumbled their way along. By the angels, it hadn’t been easy. While Lydia had been fine with abandoning the arranged nuptials, it had taken time to mend the healed relationships with his parents. He still dealt with the bias of having a Downworld lover of immortal blood.

  
Alec and Magnus had fought themselves in the early years. So many times, they had nearly lost their devotion over stupid, selfish acts. Unable to see themselves as worthy of love, they’d had such a hard time making what they had together a priority. Alec still winced when he looked back at how naïve and foolish he’d been. They had wasted so much time.

  
_He’d_ wasted so much time, he thought, as he begun to pace.

  
“Darling, it’s cold out here,” Magnus said, stepping out onto the patio.

  
Sometimes Alec still felt foolish. Like now, walking back and forth across the patio, trying to calm his fraying nerves. And after ten years, like an idiot young man, he still couldn’t find the right words.

  
Unfortunately, the Shadowhunter’s lack of response became a bit more alarming as silence reigned and he simply turned and stared at Magnus with panic in his eyes.

  
“Alexander?” Magnus asked, growing alarmed and rushing forward. “Are you all right, my love?”

  
Alec’s nerves hit a fever pitch as he reached in his pocket and pulled out the box. Perhaps if he’d practiced the proposal, his nerves wouldn’t have won out. The man who fought demons and rogues with a blade and a bow passed out before the words could make it out.

Magnus told that story to all who would listen every year thereafter.  
\--------------------------------------------

  
After twenty-five years together, Alec rolled over one morning to find Magnus sitting in a meditation pose, staring at him.

  
“Hey,” he murmured, reaching out for the warlock and laying his palm on a knee and cupping the warm flesh. Alec smiled at the grimace on Magnus’s face and began to rise with concern etching his own. “What’s wrong?”

  
Magnus’s breath hitched as his glamour faded, revealing his demon mark - golden cat-eyes. He’d had a hard night and had returned to the loft just an hour ago. Several hours earlier he’d watched a warlock born, only to die as demon blood fought human blood within the tiny body.

A warlock born of pain and agony often couldn’t stand the forces of evil and good twisting its soul into knots. And it broke his heart every time. As high warlock of the territory, it was his duty to be present and witness.

  
“She died in my arms,” he choked out as tears streamed down his cheeks in a rare display of emotion.

  
The immortal man wept in Alec’s arms.  
\--------------------------------------------

  
Alec stood in front of the mirror, self-consciously running a hand over his head. The hair that had been thick and black in his youth had faded over time, thinning and graying. The taught muscles he’d once sported had become soft with age. He’d begun to hate mirrors.

  
At fifty years old, he’d begun to feel the difference between his lover who never aged, and would always remain a young man, and himself.

  
From the other room, the warlock sighed sadly. His husband had begun to feel inadequate, and no matter how much he stated different, Magnus couldn’t convince Alec that he was enough. It had become a dance of sorts, one that had started just a few years earlier when the head of the Institute had discovered he could not wield a weapon as he had years before. The wounds had healed on the body, but not on the psyche.

  
Walking up behind his husband, Magnus admired him in the mirror, caressing every exposed tattooed rune on the skin with his eyes, and following several with his fingertips.

  
Magnus’s breath hitched when he met his husband’s eyes in the mirror.

And his voice left no doubt in either’s mind when he thickly murmured, “I am stupidly in love with you.”

  
Their obligations could wait. After decades of loving one another, they had finally figured out their priorities.  
\---------------------------------------------

  
“Hello, my love,” Magnus murmured, sitting in the chair next to the frail man. Hazel eyes met his own, and the warlock asked, “Would you like to sit in the rose garden?”

  
When he’d been forced to retire at the age of seventy, Alec had discovered he hated having time on his hands. So the Brooklyn loft he and Magnus shared had begun to bloom.

  
The massive balcony had begun to boast flowers ranging from tulips to lilacs. But Alec’s greatest pride in his declining years had become the rose garden. He’d fitted it as a place to rest. To relax. To enjoy the visits from family and friends, particularly as his health began its eventual decline as age is wont to do.

  
His parabatai and brother had passed on a few years ago, and coupled with his age, Alec’s memory had begun to slip with the loss of the soul bond between him and Jace. His sister and her family visited. So did Max with his. But Izzy, who’d been as much friend to Alec as sister, had always been his favorite companion besides Magnus. She’d remained feisty, even as she stooped in her own old age. Alec’s nieces and nephews, all of them Shadowhunters, had all grown as well, and begun yet another generation.

  
“I know you,” Alec murmured, recognizing the young man who sat on the bench beside him. Remembering the love he felt for his warlock, he leaned into the still-young man and sighed contentedly.

  
“I love you, Magnus,” he murmured, reveling in the feel of the young man’s hand running through his hair. “I so wish I could show you.”

  
“You do every day, my dear Alexander,” Magnus replied, happy that today he was recognized. He’d begun to dread the days he wasn’t, and it broke his heart bit by bit. “You are my heart, dearest.”

  
And that statement held the true and final truth.

  
Long ago, Alec had said the fateful words, “I don’t think I can live without you.”

  
Magnus’s heart had repeated the sentiment to the universe. It still did, every day.  
\--------------------------------------------

  
The Earth carries the knowledge deep and true. As Alec’s heart slowed one day and eventually stopped, the mist of the morning carried the secret from moist soil to the breeze.

  
Magnus slowly breathed in the scent of the world around him, held his beloved in his arms, and closed his eyes. He’d held Alec’s words and repeated them in his heart. I don’t think I can live without you.

  
Izzy didn’t weep when she called on Alec later to find the stone statue of the men, embraced on the bench, holding one another and gazing into each other’s eyes. No, she didn’t weep. Because the breeze had carried a secret of a forgotten lore and whispered it in her ear.

  
Their hearts bound, they would remain together forever. Immortalized in stone, and indestructible.

  
And years later, as Izzy closed her eyes one final time, she let the secret drift back to the breeze.  
\-------------------------------------------

  
The air carries a secret through rustling leaves and across bowed grass. It bubbles down into a brook that rushes over rock and crashes down like thunder. The Earth carries the knowledge down deep into its core where one day it will bind two lovers. Not in a thousand years. Maybe not in ten thousand years. But someday.


End file.
